You know the saying that “the road to success is always under construction?” It’s a constant process, a constant battle.
Failure is not the opposite of success. It’s a stepping stone. An important element of it. Each and every single time you fail, you’re actually getting closer to success.
Hard work pays off.
There’s no way to argue about it. Continue reading
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” – William Shakespeare
They say everything happens for a reason. They believe in fate, in a certain alignment of the stars. They believe in all kinds of things. They want to put the blame on the universe (or certain parts of it), but not on themselves. Continue reading
“If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders – What would you tell him?”
“I…don’t know. What…could he do? What would you tell him?”
“To shrug.” – Ayn Rand
For those of your who are into hitting the gym, lifting weights, I say this: when it feels like the weight of the world is on your shoulders… squat.
To the rest of you: massive action.
That’s it.
I used to victimize myself over all the bad things that happened to me. I was depressed and anxious and in poor health and poor and pessimistic. The world was a terrible place.
Why did this had to happen to me? Continue reading
Once or twice in your life you find yourself at the edge of everything you ever believed, felt, or trusted. It’s such a terrifying position to be in. Fear, guilt, and doubt cast a dark shadow on your freedom, and it does seem there’s nothing to do.
Of course, the irony is that you can’t spend too much time in this position without understanding some (or most) of the things that need to be understood. Continue reading
“We only have what we give.” — Isabel Allende
Even though at times it doesn’t seem so, all we are in this world is what we give. Your employer pays you according to your contribution to the firm, the people around you love and respect you according to the effort you put into building and maintaining those relationships.
The world is but a mirror.
What we give to the world becomes our legacy. What we give becomes the one thing people will never forget.
If you aspire to leave the world better than you found it, you’ll be successful. Continue reading
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards.
So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.
You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.
Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path.” — Steve Jobs
Fourteen years ago someone read one of my stories.
They didn’t like it. They told me to give up and do something else.
And this made me angry.
“If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti
Choupette, Karl Lagerfeld’s cat, could inherit her owner’s fortune, after his death yesterday at the age of 85.
Now, people are usually quick to dismiss this as some sort of eccentric behavior of the rich and famous, but… I urge you to imagine the life of someone who’s closest connection was with a cat. A cat. And someone with quite a lot of money and influence and status and all that…
I think this is the reason envy is such a stupid thing. You can have all the money in the world, yet no one loves you. You can be the hardest worker in the room, yet no one genuinely trusts you. You can have a great career, and be miserable in your love life.
For everything we gain, we must sacrifice something else.
Do you want to conquer the world? Odds are you will die young, tired, broken, defeated and alone by the weight of the world constantly pressing on your shoulders. Continue reading
